No time to do cards this year? No problem. I had our interactive team put together this handy 90 Second Card Creator. Now you can quickly and easily create your own online holiday message by mixing your favorite card (by Merge Volunteers) and your favorite music choice. All of us at Merge are grateful for your friendship and trust. We wish you all the best this holiday season.

Due to real world budget constraints and the lack of consolidation in the white label social networking space, we often have to make technology decisions before finishing our homework on strategy. Prior to this decision, we map out our audiences and create an ideal list of communication tactics to best fit the needs of the audience and the goals of the community. We do this while taking into account the existing communication tools they are already using. The resulting list is typically short and covers the spectrum between closed communication and open collaboration. An example of closed communication tools are email, phone, messaging. An example of open communication tools are blogs and forums,White label social networking vendors tend to take the approach that volume is everything and the more tools they offer, the better they stand out from their competition. While this looks great on paper, there’s a necessary balance that must be struck as to not overwhelm users with too many ways to communicate.If you put 100 people in a room, give them 50 ways to communicate, you’re likely to end up with 50 separate conversation silos each with no more than two people. This wouldn’t meet the objectives of most communities, where you want the broader community engaging in larger conversations. If you were seeking one-on-one communication tools, you’d likely be better served by e-mail, phone conversations or text messaging. Many of which you’re already using today without the community.

Ninety Seconds take away:

When you think about communication channels less is more and sometimes the tried and true dull ones like email and phone work best. Don’t let the shear wealth of features distract you from a simple elegant solution. In many cases you need to turn off most of the bells and whistles to meet your real objectives.

Last year we launched The Mulling @ Work web site for Emory’s “@ Work” radio show. The show recently received a 2008 Gabby Award of Merit for Best Non-News Radio Program.

Today we’re proud to announce that we’ve expanded the online resources on the site and added the ability to Buy “The Mulling Factor” Book and Take “The Mulling Factor” Assessment.

Enjoy the site, and we look forward to hearing how we can continue to improve and evolve MullingAtWork.com.